Book Info

Title: Wilder Girls

Author: Rory Power

Genre: Post-apocalyptic

Publication Date: July 2019

Synopsis: 

Review

First, wow, that cover right? Beautiful but just disturbing enough to stir intrigue, which is why this book jumped to the front of my TBR. That plus it was promoted as a sort of feminist spin on Lord of the Flies, but with more horror and queer themes. Sounds great, right? Sign me tf up!

I really, really wanted to love Wilder Girls. It has everything I love...in theory. Unfortunately, I felt like this was more of a A+ for premise, C- for execution. Spoilers under the cut.

Firstly, I wanted it to go a bit harder on the sci-fi angle. Mr. Harker's transformation was fascinating and I would've liked to know more about how it happened. There is room for ambiguity if you consider the fact that we, as the audience, know just about as much as the main characters do. Except, a significant portion of the book takes place in an actual science lab. We learn a bit about the Tox then but it's never quite a focus. I don't feel as if there's enough of a science element explored for it to truly fall into the realm of sci-fi.

As mentioned above, Wilder Girls promised me feminist themes. But where were they? None of the main three girls, for lack of a better term, struck me as a girl's girl. Tribalism was to be expected, but there wasn't necessarily a unifying drive among any of the girls. So often, it seemed to be Hetty, Byatt (and sometimes Reese) versus everyone else. Aside from that, it aaalllmost makes a feminist point with the Tox and its reliance on estrogen, which the presence of seemed to be a main determining factor between mutation (evolution?) and death. But it never quite gets there. I felt myself getting excited about the estrogen revelation, only to then think, "Okay, and then what?" Oh, now that we know this information, maybe it makes sense that Byatt intentionally infected one of the only men, because she's going to manipulate him to somehow escape and find her best friends. <buzzer noise> Wrong answer! Byatt infected him because she's a manipulative, pathological liar (which isn't really explored or revealed to her friends so I'm not sure what the intention was of that additional personality factor). And that's it.

There's also a specific section that casts a girl's first flare up of the Tox in a ceremonial light, with one of the younger girls experiencing her first and the older girls crowding around. It's described as fireworks and when she makes it through, she's given a chunk of bread in celebration. There's also other allusions that maybe, the Tox is something worth keeping, maybe it makes you powerful, even if it mutates you. When Mona asks Byatt, "You'd keep it, [...] If you could. Right?" it poses an interesting question to the audience as well. One that surely any woman has asked herself: what would you endure for more power in a world that systematically takes from you? Except there were no conclusions drawn there. It's a wondering that never really pays off in the text.

Perhaps the most bothersome, for me personally, was the lack of community between the girls. There were many moments where I thought they were going to rally together, work as a unit to make it through this, and they just...really never do. When it becomes obvious that the adults are working together in opposition, I thought surely they are going to work together now, but no. The fleeting excitement of all the girls fighting for their lives to avoid being gassed to death is immediately erased by the fact that Hetty and Reese sneak out of the house and leave the girls to either 1) be eaten by a mutated rampaging bear, or if they somehow escape the bear, 2) be nuked by the government? What??? Yes, they just left them, and that is, to me, exactly counter to the feminist themes I was expecting. There will be no working together to escape the island, it's every woman for herself out in these streets.

Speaking of relationships, the love that Hetty had for Byatt was so intense that at times I thought the romantic relationship would end up happening between them. Then, there would be a moment that that implied Reese would be the love interest, and the alternating seemed to happen so often that I thought maybe this would end up being a throuple? I do think there's something to be said here about how the lines blur between obsession and love (at times Hetty seemed more obsessed with Byatt than loving her), and how the lines blue between platonic and romantic love, although I'm not sure that was intentional on the author's part. I was also never convinced that the love was requited on Byatt's part; I know she's a pathological liar and is therefore unreliable, but at times it did seem to make Hetty's drive to rescue her feel a bit misplaced. And if I ever had a chance to forget that I was reading YA, the on-again/will they-won't they of Hetty and Reese made sure to remind me. It all felt very juvenile but then again, they're teenagers, so I can't fault them for that. I think there's something there to be said about morally grey decisions, and loving one another through them when they hit home, but the conclusion didn't feel fully drawn.

And finally, that ending. That ending. I'm totally okay with an unhappy or ambiguous ending, but this one felt completely out of nowhere. When I got to about 85% of the book and still had a ton of questions and wonderings, I found myself thinking, "How is she [the author] going to wrap this up???" Turns out, she doesn't! The realizations from "let's get out of here" to "oh it's actually on the island" to "Byatt is dead" to "JK, Byatt is not dead" felt like it happened way too quickly. I don't mind an open ending if it makes sense, and this one didn't. How much of Byatt's personality was down to the tox? Why was she a shell of herself when she was a pathological liar before the tox? What are they going to do when they turn up on land? I thought maybe this was intentionally left open for a sequel but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Overall, I'm not totally sure I would recommend this as a feminist retelling of The Lord of the Flies. I think the worldbuilding is very interesting, and is fun to sometimes wonder about. What could we do with The Tox? What would happen to gender inequality in a society where women are transformed into animal-like monsters (if they survive)? Do they ever figure out the hormonal impact of the Tox parasite? If you're okay with having more questions than answers, then this could work for you. Otherwise, I think it may just end up being a frustrating read.